The Video Professor is mad. You've surely seen the TV infomercial spots for his instructional CD-ROMs that "play on your computer, just like a VCR!" The commercials claim to give you the CD-ROMs free, you just pay for the shipping. In true infomercial style, when you call to order your "free" product, the upsell begins. Many claim the "free" product they order ends up costing them $89.95 on their credit card.
I truly hate this type of marketing, but it seems to be the business model used by the sellers of many sold-on-TV products. You call or go online to order said product at advertised price and through misleading upselling techniques and shipping (over)charges, the actual cost ends up being significantly higher than what you expected to spend.
So, in true internet fashion, angry consumers go online to vent their complaints at consumer activist websites like infomercialscams.com. If you go there, you see 143 total complaints against the Professor. Since Video Professor can't directly sue infomercialscams.com, they filed a federal claim in a Colorado court against 100 "John and Jane Does" who committed "unauthorized Internet disparagement of VPI and its products" on that site. Apparently it is their position that current/former customers have no right to anonymous critical speech against their company.
No kidding, this is an actual quote from Video Professor founder John Scherer:
"I personally do not believe that you can be anonymous and bash people and get away with it under the First Amendment. I will stay with this case, and I will get the names that I am requesting. I will pursue this until the Supreme Court tells me I can't get them."

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1 comments:

Anonymous said...

So The Video Professor (the late-night infomerical "Try my product" dude, sued various bloggers and websites that were critical of their products and more importantly business practices.

Its nuts. Its unamerican. It also is apparently a lousy lawsuit.

The nonprofit law firm Public Citizen sent them this letter, and posted on their website. http://www.citizen.org/documents/videoprofletter.pdf
It is killer.

Separately, I saw an article that ran on google news about a law firm going after Video Professor http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20071023006473&newsLang=en

I guess they are filing a class action and offered to represent the people VP is going after for free. Check out www.vplitigation.com Pretty interesting.

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